The Merry-Go-Round Won’t Stop Until We Name the Force That Spins It

Raising boys, confronting systems, and choosing equity over zero-sum thinking.

I’ve been turning this piece over in my head all weekend, ever since I heard the Democratic Party plans to invest $20 million to understand male voters better. Between end-of-school chaos, sports games, and birthday parties, I’ve been mentally drafting—frustrated, compelled, and energized by what I’ve read, especially Celeste Davis’ sharp, eloquent take that echoed everything I’ve been wrestling with. Her words nearly stopped me from writing mine. But this conversation—about gender equity and the false belief that progress for one group means loss for another—deserves more voices. So here’s mine. Stick with it—and also please read hers.

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Photo by Marjorie Bertrand on Unsplash

I sat on the sidelines watching my sons play soccer, their best friend beside me, all of us heading to a birthday party next. After one of my boys scored and flailed his arms to beat his chest in celebration, my husband leaned over: “Do all the kids do that?” Their friend laughed: “No, just them. Why do they do that?” I chuckled and said, “Great question.” He replied, “Boys, I guess, right?”

I bit my tongue. I wanted to ask this seven-year-old what it even means to him to be a boy. [For the record, I did not].

This is the tension I live daily—as a gender equity advocate, a straight, White, cisgender woman, and the mom of twin boys. I read Celeste Davis’ words, and it was like she reached into my brain and put language to everything I’ve been wrestling with: how to raise boys with care and consciousness in a world still shaped by patriarchy. How to do this work without defaulting to shame. How to evolve. She writes,

“How are we as parents supposed to cram in a full understanding of history, patriarchal structures, patriarchal masculinity and a full understanding of how to be a loving, intimate partner in the sliver of time when boys are old enough to understand such things, but not so old that we, as a parents, but especially as mothers, lose our foothold as the credible authority figure in our son’s lives to his peers and media?”

To ensure we are clear on language, when I refer to the “patriarchy” I mean a social system where men hold primary power and dominate. Breaking news: we live in a patriarchal society.

Five years ago, I’d be railing against the idea of Democrats investing in understanding male voters. I’d be writing a more snarky piece like Lyz’ Dingus of the Week. Today, I see it differently. Maybe it’s motherhood. Maybe it’s the chaos of raising toddlers while working through a pandemic. Maybe it’s the reckoning that didn’t come—and the one that still must. Whatever it is, I’ve changed. And I keep changing through failure and lessons learned.

This piece is part of that journey—a messy, uncomfortable, necessary process of unlearning, listening, and trying again. My hope? That more of us are on it. Because if we want real gender equity, we have to stop treating it like a zero-sum game.

The arguments live in a binary: women are the victims and men are at fault or men are the victims and women are at fault. In some ways, I wish it were that simple to be honest. After 20 years working to address violence against women, I’ve seen how deeply this binary shapes the movement. The first narrative has fueled much of the mainstream response to violence against women—particularly within the framework of White feminism. The second prompts intense defensiveness and backlash, as it directly challenges the foundations of that established platform.

Round and round we go, blaming the patriarchy—pink pussy hats and all—without realizing it’s the very force pushing the merry-go-round. We say “the patriarchy hurts everyone,” but rarely build our solutions, movements, or resistance like we believe it.

Advocates often declare, “abusers never change,” then turn to the criminal legal system for justice, as if locking someone up is liberation. We’re fighting patriarchy with patriarchal tools. We are fighting a losing battle as a result.

Meanwhile, survivors are pushed through broken systems: no housing, no income, no access to care. Children and adults carry trauma that gets mislabeled as “bad behavior” in schools, churches, and workplaces—places that should know better, but don’t. Instead, they reinforce the same tired scripts about masculinity and power.

If we want to end gender-based violence, survivors must lead—and we must confront the root causes: systemic racism, patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism. All of it. Otherwise, we’re not ending violence. We’re just rearranging it.

Celeste again writes,

“Men are harmed by patriarchy and then often faulted entirely for this system they are stuck in, all without ever having been educated on the system that causes their suffering.”

We are setting them up to fail. That is not the world I want for my boys.

Yes, they have more language and tools than I ever did. They can name their feelings thanks to a whole body of work known as social emotional learning. That’s powerful. But systems haven’t caught up. I still hear “boys don’t cry” and “suck it up” on playgrounds. My kids tell me Dad takes them to the park while I stay home and clean. I break up wrestling matches and hear a dad chuckle, “boys will be boys, right?”

That phrase is everywhere—from playgrounds to presidents to the manosphere. And in those moments, I fail too. I stay silent. Because yes, the patriarchy harms everyone, but it still protects some of us – in those moments, silence feels safer.

We expect boys and men to “do better,” to reject patriarchy, to show up differently. But just as we wouldn’t expect children to tie their shoes without being taught, we can’t expect boys and men to unlearn a system they were never taught to recognize in the first place.

Who is teaching them? …crickets.

The default response is often, “They should know right from wrong,” or “They should know it’s not okay to hit a woman.” And yes—they should. But they’ve been taught otherwise, both implicitly and explicitly.

They learned it when their father hit their mother and no one intervened. When they were molested and told to stay quiet. When a teacher told them to stop crying. When their friend told them pink is for girls. When they saw Donald Trump brag about grabbing women by the pussy—then watched him get sworn in not once, but twice.

We’re demanding behavior change without shifting the culture that shapes it. That math just doesn’t math.

Like Celeste, I too have been thinking about bell hooks. In her introduction to all about love, bell writes:

“Yet schools for love do not exist. Everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. However, this love often eludes us. And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply did not know what to do.”

Round and round the merry-go-round goes.

We say patriarchy hurts everyone, but we don’t teach people how or why. Instead, we shame and blame boys and men into, quite literally, depression or incarceration. We demand men behave differently, but offer no path to transformation. We equate cancel culture with justice. We expect emotional fluency and self-awareness in a culture that still shames boys for crying. Then, when they fail, we turn to carceral solutions— locking them in patriarchal systems.

It’s a double standard. Women are right to name how we’ve been socialized—be quiet, stay small, follow the rules—and to use that truth to fuel our fight for change. But when men show up how they were socialized—don’t feel, stay in control, never show weakness—we’re quick to dismiss them as misogynistic assholes. To be clear, I am guilty of this time and time again.

We defend reproductive freedom with evidence-based science, while ignoring the same reliable and valid science that shows men and boys are in crisis. This isn’t about coddling. It’s about reckoning. Two things can be true: men are suffering and they’ve caused harm.

So again: who is teaching them?

That’s the world I’m working to build. One where schools, families, and workplaces all share a common language about power, patriarchy, and accountability. Where we teach kids—from kindergarten to college—to understand the roots of gender-based violence, and where every adult gets the same education when they start a job, run for office, or sit on a jury. Where my voice does not feel small or silenced, instead, it’s one within a chorus of parents who speak up when harmful gender norms enter the playground.

But that dream feels distant. We live in a country led by a president who silences, scapegoats, and seeks to consolidate power for people who look and think like him. As I’ve said before, we didn’t suddenly become a racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic nation on November 6, 2024. We’ve been inhaling those toxins for generations—they simply metastasized at the ballot box.

It’s clear as day: we’re living in a society where most people are starting from stage one—no tools, no language, no compass. The disease has spread, but we haven’t even begun treatment. Most don’t know what they're looking for, let alone how to heal it..

Still, I don’t believe the answer is jumping off the merry-go-round. I believe it’s staying on, locking eyes with the person next to us, and asking: What have you been taught? What have I refused to learn? And how do we teach each other something better?

I’ll continue to quote Celeste Davis’ brilliance,

“If we could move away from the blame game being the center of our activism, if we could communicate better across divided gender war lines, maybe we could see that we all want the same thing—we all want less pain.”

We must acknowledge the truth: we’ve all benefited from patriarchy – some more than others. We’ve all looked away when it served us. But if we want off this ride, we have to name that. And then we have to get to work—not just calling out harm, but building the schools, systems, and culture that teach us all how to love, how to feel, and how to change.

I recommit to this work. I’m in this work for the long haul. I know I’ll get it wrong—probably more than once. Call me in. Hold me accountable. I won’t run when it gets hard, messy, or uncomfortable. I’m staying in it, even when it hurts. Especially then.